For long stretches, the Los Angeles Lakers can be a very good team that is capable of beating any other in the NBA. The problem is that they don’t stick to their identity or what gets them a lead.
Inconsistency has been a problem all season long for them. It reared its ugly head more than at any time before in Game 2 of their first-round playoff series against the Denver Nuggets on Monday.
Los Angeles took a 20-point lead in the third quarter, and it looked like the team had a great chance of tying the series. It had success running the pick-and-roll with Anthony Davis as the screener in the first half, but it inexplicably stopped running that sequence for most of the second half.
As a result, the Lakers scored just 40 points after halftime and saw their lead gradually dwindle until it disappeared completely due to Jamal Murray’s game-winning jumper at the buzzer.
Davis said afterward that sometimes his team doesn’t know what it is doing — at both ends of the floor.
Anthony Davis: "We have stretches where we don't know what we're doing on both ends of the floor … Just got to get it right on Thursday [in Game 3]."
— Dave McMenamin (@mcten) April 23, 2024
One has to wonder if this was a veiled criticism of Lakers head coach Darvin Ham.
Ham has been criticized all season long by fans, especially as the team has lacked offensive ball and player movement down the stretch of games, as well as counters for adjustments made by opponents.
Championship teams keep doing what gets them leads until it doesn’t work anymore. These Lakers right now have a sizable performance gap because of their inconsistent execution.
Right now, they’re down 0-2 to the defending NBA champion Nuggets, and they haven’t given fans any reason to have faith that they will win even one game, let alone make the series competitive.
